Modi revealed the figures himself in his blog posting on Saturday after campaigning for the nine phase Lok Sabha elections drew to a close.

NEW DELHI: Narendra Modi has waged the battle for BJP virtually single-handedly, addressing 440 rallies across the length and breadth of the country since his anointment as the party's prime ministerial candidate in September while most other national leaders of the party largely confined themselves to their constituencies.

Modi revealed the figures himself in his blog posting on Saturday after campaigning for the nine phase Lok Sabha elections drew to a close.

"Friends in the party told me that I have addressed rallies and programmes in almost 5,800 locations, covering a distance of over 3 lakh kilometers. The number of rallies I addressed in this campaign season is 440, including the Bharat Vijay Rallies that I began with the blessings of Maa Vaishno Devi on March 26, 2014," Modi said.

BJP chief Rajnath Singh — who contested from Lucknow — was the only other top leader to have addressed over a 100 BJP rallies in different states in the past few months.

Senior leaders LK Advani, Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley and Murli Manohar Joshi stayed put in their own constituencies for most of the election campaign. Since the polling in their constituencies were in the later phases of the long-drawn election, the party could not optimally utilise their services.

Nitin Gadkari, former party chief, did chip in by addressing some rallies, but only after polling got over in his seat Nagpur on April 10. As such, most of the credit for giving a push to 'Modi wave' goes to the PM candidate himself.

Other BJP programmes such as Chai pe Charcha, 3D hologram addresses and use of social media, too, were also centered on Modi and controlled by his close team. This had invited criticism from some quarters that the campaign is too Modicentric and even veterans like former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee were not celebrated during the campaign.

Call it a lack of demand from party candidates or their falling political fortunes, senior leaders like Advani, Swaraj and Joshi have not had much of a presence in the BJP campaign even as Modi even held rallies in Tamil Nadu for newly acquired NDA allies like DMDK, MDMK and others.

Advani, who was the presumptive prime minister for BJP in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, spent most of his time in Gandhinagar during the 2014 elections. This came as a surprise to many within the party and outside as he had hardly campaigned for himself in the previous elections.

According to his office, Advani did address BJP rallies in West Bengal, Bihar, Uttarakhand, Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh and Kerala. But he spent a day each in these states and the rallies went virtually unnoticed.

Swaraj, considered close to the Advani camp that has been antagonistic to Modi, chose to confine herself to her constituency Vidisha for much of the Lok Sabha elections. She campaigned in a few seats of Madhya Pradesh, and spent a day each in Haryana and Delhi.

Once polling was over in Vidisha on April 24, in the sixth phase of the nine phase elections, Swaraj visited Telangana, Gujarat and Uttarakhand for a day each and spent a couple of days in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.

Jaitley, considered close to Modi, did not budge from his constituency Amritsar even on April 7, the day BJP manifesto was released in the Capital. Faced with a tough fight as Congress fielded former Punjab chief minister Amrinder Singh against him, Jaitley decided to focus on his own seat.